


In our house full of violets and sun

by caughtinanocean



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Love, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtinanocean/pseuds/caughtinanocean
Summary: Sometimes, falling for someone is about learning who you are – not about ending up together.
Relationships: Aster Flores/Original Character(s), Ellie Chu/Aster Flores, Ellie Chu/Original Character(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	In our house full of violets and sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neveralarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/gifts).



She thinks of Aster.

Aster is there on the long train ride, with the books Ellie packed, her father’s dumplings, and Paul’s emoji-string texts. She’s in the long strands of wheat fields and the faces of strangers. Here and there, Ellie catches the amber of her eyes or the particular curve of one of her smiles or — that kiss.

She’s in the roar and blur of sound and color when Ellie moves into the dorms. Ellie finds her in the pages of books, in paint strokes. She hears Aster in readings at poetry club and clever observations during Intro to Philosophy discussion sessions, in someone’s bright, boisterous laugh at her first college party.

She thinks of Aster for a while.

—

Life at Grinnell looks a little bit different from her small town bubble. 

There are the classes, for one thing — her ambitious course load and her stacks of assigned reading and thousands of words of papers, all her own.

There’s her on-campus job at the library, helping dead-eyed students who haven’t slept in thirty hours navigate the reference shelves and then cursing them when she has to make order of the chaos they’ve created. 

There are the activities — poetry clubs and parties and student musicians unions. She learns that her favorite poet in the club is named Ari; the blue-haired girl who makes the best comments in Philosophy is Jacqueline; and the owner of the laugh she’s always hearing at parties is a Linguistics major named Claudia. 

Then, there are the phone calls home to dad, the texts (and the occasional cold packs of sausages) sent from Paul.

Thoughts of Aster trickle into the in-betweens. Ellie thinks of her in quiet moments at bus stops, the latest nights in the library when she can’t look at another word of Simone de Beauvoir for at least several minutes, and sometimes during very dull lectures for Intro to Civics.

She thinks of Aster sometimes — every once in a while. 

— 

When she comes home to visit, she’s all anticipation, but Aster’s not in town. 

Paul fills her in on all the gossip, on the fit Trig threw when Aster left town, when he knew she really wouldn’t be his wife, on the way her parents’ reputation suffered. 

Not for the first time, Ellie fumes at the small-mindedness of small town life. “I don’t think she’s going to come back,” Paul says, watching her face, earnest eyes looking for sorrow. 

“We could look for her,” he says.

This is perhaps the first conversation they’ve ever had where he’s done all the talking. 

Ellie thinks about it, for one long moment. She thinks of Aster — painting on walls, floating in the water, kissing her on the street. 

Aster got out. She didn’t marry Trig. Wherever she is, she’s trying for that great painting. 

Ellie shakes her head.

There’s only so much time, and her dad needs help around the house and at the station, and Paul needs help with the small business paperwork for the new food truck, and Ellie needs to be the one who helps them. 

She can’t play private investigator this time. 

—

A few semesters in, “every once in a while,” has died down to a rare trickle. 

By the time Claudia — who’s gone from classmate and gregarious party-goer to study-buddy and friend — looks at Ellie from across the organized chaos of notes in her bedroom, and asks, “Have you ever kissed a girl?” Ellie hasn’t thought about Aster in weeks. 

“Yes,” Ellie tells her, “I have.”

Claudia’s got one hand in the halo of her curls and one hand on a stack of color-coded index cards. She’s wearing a candy pink cropped t-shirt that says, “The beginning is always today.” She smiles. “Oh yeah?” she says. 

Where would you even get something like that, Ellie wonders, her mind racing like an engine. That’s a Mary Wollstonecraft quote. The shirt matches some of the index cards. 

Ellie babbles something incomprehensible about the relationship between the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter. 

Claudia’s smile turns amused, but doesn’t fade. 

Ellie doesn’t tell her the story of that first kiss — not yet. 

She thinks about it, though — about the way the boundless possibilities stretched out before her in that moment; her lips on Aster’s and the whole world at their feet, anything they wanted to make of it. 

She’d never felt that way before.

Ellie looks into Claudia’s eyes — big and brown, crinkled with a genuine smile — and she sees it. Possibility. 

—

She texts Paul about what happened. He calls her — video on and everything.

Ellie sighs — but picks up anyway. 

“Wussy,” Paul says, “Bet you feel like a big idiot for not kissing her.”

Ellie doesn’t throw her phone, but it’s a close thing. 

“I’ll send some pork sausage,” Paul tells her.

—

She’s not a wussy. 

It just takes her a little while.

(Claudia gets tired of waiting first).

—

Ellie doesn’t think of Aster very much at all, for a while after that.

There’s no room for much of anyone else when she and Claudia huddle together for nighttime picnics, watching the snow sparkle and saying things like, “It feels like we’re building something, doesn’t it? Getting to know you...it’s an act of creation.” 

Ellie knows a little more about love now — it’s ugly and selfish and messy and it makes you absolutely <>insufferable.

She’s okay with that.

“You look happy,” her father tells her on the phone smiling and blinking like he’s staring at something too bright to look at directly. Paul, the one responsible for teaching him how to make a video call, beams in the background at both of them, proud as a new parent.

“Is this the best part?” Ellie asks.

“It’s all the best part,” he says. “Every minute. Enjoy it.”

—

A few years later, when college is fading into a memory, and she and Claudia have settled into a little Seattle apartment, where their tee-shirts are so mixed together that Ellie sometimes doesn’t notice that she’s put on a crop top until she’s already out the door, the holiday card comes.

It’s the end of a good year. Ellie’s dad is healthy and Paul’s truck has turned into a fleet and Ellie has successfully dragged Claudia out west. There’s something warm and bright about hiding from the Seattle rain and opening mail together. She’s got a video call with her dad later, and Paul’s going to be in town with the truck next week. 

“Who’s this from?” Claudia asks, flipping it over and over in her hands. “Did someone send it to us by mistake? Is it a marketing thing?”

Ellie is, for a moment, dazzled by the way the burgundy she’s painted her nails looks against the warm, dark of Claudia’s skin — the way she’s often dazzled by Claudia.

She takes the card.

There is Aster’s face, amber eyes, and a new smile Ellie never saw on her. She’s in an art studio, surrounded by her work — improved with the years of study and confidence, but Ellie remembers the style. There’s a young woman next to her, pretty, with a delicate-featured pixie face and an angular haircut. They’re looking at each other with warmth and joy. A small dog romps by their feet. 

The card says, “Happy holidays from Aster, Alice & Olive.”

There’s a note, in Aster’s sure, familiar hand, “Thank you for showing me I could paint a great picture.”

There’s also a phone number.

“No,” Ellie says. “It’s not a mistake or a marketing thing. It’s my first kiss.”

Claudia wraps her arms around Ellie’s shoulders and looks at the picture. “Tell me about her,” she says.

Ellie tells her the story, of the letters and her first taste of yearning, of seeing and being seen.

Claudia smiles. “That’s a good one.” 

Claudia’s first crush was a raver girl with too many bracelets and pink hair. Ellie already knows the story. It’s a good one, too. 

—

Ellie calls Aster on a Tuesday. She’s done early at work, so she takes the afternoon and gathers her courage. 

‘Please don’t pick up,’ she thinks. ‘Please pick up.’

Aster answers on the third ring. 

“Hi,” Ellie manages, trying to forget how much shit she gave Paul all those years ago, when he was the one who couldn’t find words. 

“Hi,” Aster says. Ellie can _hear_ her smile. “Ellie, it’s you right?”

“How’d you find my address?” Ellie asks. 

“You’re not the only one who knows how to play PI,” Aster tells her. 

“Why?”

“To thank you,” Aster says. “And...to see if you were happy.”

Ellie looks back, over her shoulder, to where Claudia is ranking their takeout menus in order of preference for the night’s dinner. She can’t stop the smile. “Yes,” Ellie says. “I’m happy. And you? You look happy.”

“Yeah,” Aster says. “I really am. Thank you, for showing me.” 

“Thanks for seeing me,” Ellie says. 

For a long moment, they’re quiet together. Then, Aster launches into what books she’s been reading, and what French film she just watched, and it’s like old times, but the Ellie back then couldn’t have dreamt this life. She didn’t know how yet.


End file.
